Chapter Ten
THEY TAKE ABIGAIL'S body away just before dawn.
I stand in the corridor with Mrs. Lyme, watching men in dark suits carry something wrapped in white through passages I'll never walk again without remembering.
Devyn is somewhere ahead of them, making calls, giving orders, handling the unthinkable with the same cold efficiency he handles everything else.
Mrs. Lyme talks.
I don't know if she's filling the silence or if she's decided I need to know these things. But she talks, voice low and steady, and I listen. Stories about the king. Things I never knew. Things the world outside these walls will never know.
I file each one away like photographs in an album. Evidence of a man no one else seems to see.
A phone buzzes. Footsteps approach. One of Devyn's men appears at the end of the corridor, and whatever he says makes Mrs. Lyme's face go pale.
"The Court of Stakeholders," she says in a low voice. "Emergency session. They're convening now."
Now. Not tomorrow. Not after we've slept, or showered, or had time to process that there was a body rotting beneath our feet for weeks.
Now.
The car is already waiting.
Devyn appears beside me—I don't know from where, he just materializes the way he always does—and his hand finds the small of my back, guiding me forward.
He hasn't spoken to me since we found her.
Hasn't looked at me, really. His jaw is tight, his eyes fixed ahead, and I can feel the tension radiating off him like heat from a furnace.
Mrs. Lyme follows us to the car. She's still talking, quieter now, leaning close to my ear as we walk.
More stories. More evidence.
I don't know why she's telling me these things. Maybe she's afraid of what's coming. Maybe she wants me to understand what's at stake—not just a king, but the man underneath the crown.
Or maybe she just needs someone to know.
The car door closes. The engine starts. And we're moving toward a room full of people who've already decided my husband is a murderer.
The Court of Stakeholders meets underground.
I don't know what I expected—marble halls, maybe, or something that looked like a courtroom from a legal drama.
Instead we descend through layers of stone and security until we reach a chamber that feels ancient.
Vaulted ceilings. Torch-style lighting that flickers against the walls.
A massive circular table surrounded by faces I don't recognize.
Faces that all turn toward us when we enter.
Toward Devyn.
The weight of their stares is physical. Accusation. Suspicion. Fear. I can read it in the way they hold themselves, the way some lean back as he passes, as if guilt might be contagious.
Devyn doesn't react. Doesn't acknowledge. He walks to his seat like a man walking into his own living room, and he sits, and he waits.
I take the chair beside him. My hands are trembling. I fold them in my lap and will them to stop.
The Baron of Greenwich arrives last.
Patrick Briones.
I know who he is before anyone speaks his name. The room shifts when he enters—a collective breath, a subtle leaning away. And his face—
His face is grief given form. Raw. Devastating. The kind of pain that hasn't had time to scar over, still bleeding fresh beneath the surface.
Abigail's father.
His eyes find Devyn immediately. The hatred in them makes my stomach turn.
Devyn gives him nothing. Stone meeting stone.
"We are here," a silver-haired woman announces from the head of the table, "to address the matter of Lady Abigail Briones."
The matter. Like she was a line item on an agenda.
"Her body was discovered yesterday in the dungeons beneath Chaleur Estate." The woman's voice is clinical. Detached. "Preliminary findings suggest she was killed—”
"Murdered." The older man’s voice cracks. "My daughter was murdered. And she was found in his house."
His. Not the king. Not Devyn. Just his, spat like venom.
"We don't yet have conclusive—" someone begins.
"She ran from him!" Patrick is on his feet now, shaking. "Everyone knows it. She ran because she saw what he was, and he caught her, and he—"
“Baron, control yourself—”
“I want justice!” Spittle flies from the baron’s lips. "I want him to pay for what you did to my little girl! And your own queen—” He points at me, and heads snap to my direction. “She said so herself, did she not? She saw my daughter run away—”
“That’s all I saw,” I protest.
“Then you know he killed her!”
A stunned gasp escapes me when I realize what he’s forcing me to admit. “That’s a lie—”
“You are the one who’s lying! You’ll do everything to protect your murderous husband—”
The moment I hear him call my king a murderer—
I lose it.
I don’t mean to, but it just happens—
I'm on my feet before I realize I'm moving.
"Stop calling him that!"
I know it’s impolite to cry out like that, and that I should sit down. And...and calm down, too, especially with Devyn’s gaze burning into the side of my face, commanding me to stay silent.
But—
“This is our king you’re accusing!”
It’s like what I said. I’ve lost it, and the words are just rushing out, one after another—
“Our king!”
My hands are...moving of its own accord, making wild gestures that even I can’t comprehend.
"The same man who paid for Mrs. Lyme's entire family to relocate after their house burned down—out of his own pocket, not the treasury!
The same man who jumped into a frozen lake to save a drowning puppy!
A puppy! The man you're calling a monster once carried a six-year-old girl three miles through a blizzard because her school bus broke down! "
I'm aware, distantly, that I sound unhinged.
But I can’t seem to stop.
"Our king—my husband—who was almost your own son-in-law—wasn’t he the one to pay off your loans before?
What reason has he to murder Abigail? In all the years he’s served as your king, hasn’t he served with honor?
So how dare you slander him? My husband is a good man!
Not just that, but he’s...he’s also beautiful, with an even more beautiful smile!
Granted, you rarely see it, but he does smile, I swear, and when it happens, it's like—like watching the sky turn pink while pigs fly past!
It's that man you're accusing! That man who—"
"—who will kill you himself if you say another word."
Devyn's voice cuts through my rambling like a blade.
And all I can do is freeze because I think...
I think I also want to kill myself.
What in the world did I just say?
Devyn points at my chair. "Sit."
I bow my head in shame. “Yes, Your Majesty.”
Someone snorts as I take a seat, and the sound is followed by another snort, and then there’s a third one...and a fourth one...and I stop counting when I realize that there isn’t some powerfully contagious virus sweeping over the room.
It’s just everyone...laughing.
At me.
Hewhay’s, if you’re listening...
Are you really sure I’m destined to be here?
Maybe you wrote wrong, and what you really meant is that in this world I’ll be...deluded? Deranged?
"This session," the silver-haired woman says with a voice that also seems to suspiciously shake with ill-suppressed laughter, "will reconvene when we have more information. The investigation continues."
It's not an exoneration. But it's not a conviction either.
That should be enough for Devyn to forgive my temporary insanity.
Right?
I START TALKING AS soon as the door to our chambers closes behind us.
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I don't know what happened, I just—they were saying those things and I couldn't—and Mrs. Lyme told me all those stories and I—the puppy thing just came out and—"
Devyn is walking toward me.
Not walking. Stalking. Slow, deliberate steps that eat up the distance between us while I babble and back away.
"—and I know I shouldn't have said anything but they were looking at you like you were a monster and you're not, you're really not, even though you're very scary sometimes, and if you think about it, I never said anything that’s not true. Even your smile—”
My back hits the wall.
Oh no. Too late. I'm dead.
His hands land on my shoulders. Not hard. But firm. Pinning me in place.
I squeeze my eyes shut.
"No one," he says quietly, "has ever defended me before."
My eyes fly open.
He's close. So close I can see the gold flecks in his irises, the tension in his jaw, the way his chest rises and falls just slightly faster than normal. His expression is still controlled—still stone—but something underneath is cracking.
"What?" I breathe.
"Stood up for me. Put themselves at risk for me." His thumbs press into my shoulders, not painful but grounding. "No one. Ever."
Oh.
Oh, this man.
"Why did you do it?" His voice is rough. "You could have stayed silent. It would have been safer."
"Because they don't see you." The words come out soft. "Not like we do. Not like the people at home who know what you're really like." I swallow. "I just wanted them to see what I see. That you're not a monster. That you're actually..."
Don't say it.
Don't say it, Bailey.
"...the most caring, protective..."
Stop talking. Stop talking right now.
"...sweetest..."
I stop speaking when I see the color staining his cheekbones.
Don't say it don't say it don't say it—
"You're blush—"
He kisses me.
And yes, I know he’s doing it to shut me up, but...it doesn’t matter.
I melt anyway, and...oh.
This kiss.
It’s different somehow, and when he finally pulls back—
"You," he murmurs, "are impossible."
His gaze drops to my mouth.
Eighth time. I'm still counting.
And then I stop counting, because his hands are in my hair and his body is pressing me into the wall and I forget everything except the way he feels against me, around me, overwhelming every sense until there's nothing left but him.
THAT NIGHT, I FINALLY find the courage to tell him everything.
I leave nothing out. Abigail’s last words. My fears about him being her murderer. But also...how I came to realize that I need to make a choice. And so I chose to trust him.